


Baby Games

by glowspider



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Games, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27110350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowspider/pseuds/glowspider
Summary: Baby games for stupid idiot baby employees.
Kudos: 22
Collections: play stupid games win stupid prizes





	Baby Games

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [peri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CPericardium) for proofreading.

“I brought Doritos!”

Alexandria snatched the bag from him and punted it across the room, where it fell limp with a crinkle.

“David, I’ve told you multiple times now not to bring those corn chips in here.”

He stared forlornly at the crummy mess. It did not occur to him to use his powers to procure another bag. 

“I thought you said you didn’t want nacho flavor. Those were cool ranch.”

“Wrong.” She yanked his hood over his head. “The only flavor I enjoy, let alone tolerate, is nacho.”

He struggled in her grasp, a fish heaving for water, until she dropped him on the ground, where he fell limp with a crinkle. 

“Then why did you ask me not to bring nacho Doritos?” 

“They stain the cards orange, idiot.” 

Alexandria turned away, leaving him behind. The mighty Eidolon sniffled and wiped at his face with his sleeve. 

“It’s the only brand of chip that goes well with Pepsi Max,” he whispered to himself, and sniffled a bit more. He didn’t really understand what it was that set Pepsi Max apart from the rest of the Pepsi mainline products, but the word “max” promised some nebulous notion of power and excellence, and the austere black label was flat-out cool. Slowly, Eidolon picked himself up, walked over to the table, and sat down. Nothing was injured, of course, except for his pride. 

And the chips. Can’t forget the chips! Bless their little hearts, he bought them on sale from his neighborhood Save A Lot. Double sale.

Everyone in the room pretended like they hadn’t witnessed the exchange. Legend thought about saying something, maybe a “be nice,” or “hey, leave him alone!” but took so long considering what sort of intervention he might need to make that the moment had already passed. 

It wasn’t worth the effort anyways. Perhaps, years ago, Eidolon could have taken Alexandria to HR, but upper management (Doctor Mother) had closed down the department after a string of Case-53s realized they could report their unlawful imprisonment and experimentation to trained specialist Sharon White, who graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, class of ‘87. Sharon had certificates and everything, not that it was enough to keep her job.

The Number Man stared across the room. Doormaker and the Clairvoyant stared back.

“Can we close the door?” he asked. “The two of them standing there is kind-of creeping me out.”

Alexandria tossed some hair over her shoulder, which David had to duck to avoid. Indestructible as the keratin was, it could be very dangerous when flung about so carelessly. There’d been a time when she’d brandished it as a whip, until Doctor Mother decided it was weird and she needed to “cut it out.” 

“What, you’re scared? There are like two slasher films based off your life story!”

“Like” was being used liberally here. Alexandria knew exactly what number of movies had been based off of Kurt’s adolescent years, and she’d been the first in line to see _The Numbering_ and _The Numbering Two: This Time There’s Multiplication_ when they’d been released in theaters. The specter of his murdercrimes hovered over American horror cinema in a way no one had since Ed Gein, ethics of transforming real-life tragedy into entertainment be damned.

“I’m not scared,” he insisted. Someone had put a poster of the first film up on the wall a few years ago, and tonight he’d been forced to take a seat directly across from it. The absence of HR was keenly felt. It had not occurred to the Number Man that he ran payroll, or that a cut holiday bonus could be an excellent bargaining chip in the underground resistance against Alexandria’s reign of terror.

“So let them watch,” Eidolon said. There were no allies here. 

The Number Man looked to Contessa—he knew Legend would remain passive, besides a simpering text two hours after the fact. They’d engage in some shit-talking, which would be cathartic but unproductive, and then the texts would leak to Alexandria. Legend had the backbone of a musty banana.

“They’re staring at us,” he said. Not true. The Clairvoyant did not have eyes. Checkmate, pencil-pusher.

“Kurt, if you don’t like them staring, just turn them around.” 

The room went quiet. Doctor Mother had spoken.

The Number Man rose from his seat, because orders were orders. He took a step towards the odd pair standing in the hall, and considered the logistics of rotating the two men 180 degrees. They were so pale, and so weird, and even now, he got the strange sense that the Clairvoyant knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling, and was passing judgement in some remote sort of way, like there was an inside joke that he was the current butt of. Sometimes the flap of skin where his eyes should have been jiggled in the memory of what it would have been like to blink. 

This disgusted the Number Man, though he would never admit it aloud. His understanding of the Clairvoyant was that he was a child-at-heart in a literal sense, and though The Number Man had resorted to gratuitous, unspeakable, running-out-of-corn-syrup violence in the past, bullying children was a step too far. 

Doormaker did stare. A ghost of a smile crept along his face, and then it was gone. To the Number Man, he felt like a most intimate shadow, with the same khakis and button-up and cardboardy disposition. There were traces of an ordinary man there, like Legend or Alexandria or Eidolon (just average joes, the three of them), but he barely spoke, let alone existed. 

The Number Man learned, more from slasher films than his own spotty background, that it was the quiet ones you needed to watch out for.

His hands were shaking now. The next step felt like lead.

“Coward,” said Alexandria. 

The Number Man whirled around.

“Oh, really? Why don’t you come over here and—”

The Path saw the way forward, so Contessa lobbed her shoe overhand, whacking the door so that it slammed shut in the faces of Doormaker and the Clairvoyant. It wouldn’t keep the Clairvoyant from peering in, but it would shut up her other coworkers, and that was enough for her. Without her intervention, “Game Night” would have turned into “Punch Each Other In The Throat and Give Each Other Purple Nurples” and she just wasn’t feeling up to that. Maybe next month.

“That wasn’t very nice,” said Doormaker to the Clairvoyant, though he didn’t sound very sad about it. They were alone together in that dark and empty hall, and it felt very bad to be excluded from the only fun thing that ever happened around here. He felt almost as ignored as their silent Custodian, who had a personality just as strong as him but hid it just as well. They were both megabitches who enjoyed the petty squabbles of the conspiracy office work environment. Both had recognized that to be established in the pecking order they would have to submit themselves to potential mockery. Better to be the outsider looking in, to never risk being known or exposed, to remain above-it-all and gazing down. Neither had ever wanted to belong to something. That was stupid! Friends were for children, and fitting in was a _human_ need; they were beyond that.

The poor Clairvoyant, though. He never had a choice.

“What do you want to play?” asked Doormaker. He knew full well that the Clairvoyant would not respond.

“I don’t have any cards.” Cards were just a short trip away, but Doormaker thought it was too much to bother with. 

He wondered what sort of games the Clairvoyant would enjoy, because even Cauldron staff could be considerate sometimes. The Doormaker had never babysat before. What did little kids play? 

“Oh! How about Patty Cake?”

The Clairvoyant’s lack-of-response seemed as good an affirmation as he was going to get, so the two of them sat down on the floor, criss-cross applesauce across from each other.

“I’ll sing, and both of us will clap along. Got it?” Doormaker only knew the first two lines, but it wasn’t like the Clairvoyant cared.

He brought his palms together, relieved as The Doormaker followed suit.

 _"_ Patty cake _,”_ he sang.

Their hands collided, and an image came to mind.

_Two shapes, unimaginable in scope, crashing, weaving, wriggling, and whatever other stuff space worms were supposed to do in one of the trigger visions everybody skims._

“Patty cake.”

_A girl in a tight metal box, blood streaming in rivulets down her hands. She gagged and thrashed. Menstruation was disgusting and unnatural and the cotton felt bad on her skin._

“Baker’s man.”

_What did the individual person matter in the grand scheme of things? They were but worms crawling in the dirt and ignored even as they doubled, tripled, quadrupled in population and mass in comparison to their megalithic gods. We are all so sma—_

“Fuck, stop!” Doormaker yelled. Whatever those visions were, whatever story or message The Clairvoyant was attempting to communicate, he just didn’t care. It was good he quit while he was ahead, too. Doormaker couldn’t remember the next set of lyrics in _Patty Cake_ , so he would’ve needed to start from the top again. “No more games with physical contact.”

The Clairvoyant did not respond. He never did.

“What about Peek-A-Boo? Kids love that shit. I’m sure you know how to play Peek-A-Boo.” 

Twenty-something was a little old to be playing Peek-A-Boo, but desperate times called for desperate measures. They had no cards, no contact, no communication between the two of them.

“I’ll cover my eyes, and it’ll look like I disappeared. And then I pull them away and go _Peek-A-Boo_ and you clap or maybe motion along that’s the end of the game. Here, let’s try.”

Doormaker covered his eyes. The game was supposed to teach basic forms of communication and social interaction to babies. It worked because babies don’t understand object permanence at that point in life, so to cover one’s face was akin to disappearing from existence, only to pop back in again. A bit like Doormaker’s power, if you thought about it real hard.

“Peek-a-boo!” yelled Doormaker. A problem occurred to him: the object permanence thing relied on sight, but the Clairvoyant had no eyes.

The Clairvoyant laughed and clapped anyways. There were other means of seeing than through the eyes. Besides, it made Doormaker happy. That was just the nice, right thing to do. 

Floors upon floors below, parahuman experiments wailed in their cages. Inside the room at the end of the dark hallway, Upper Management (Doctor Mother) and a select number of employees played some complicated game with rules too boring to try to describe. The Clairvoyant and Doormaker peek-a-booed. 

Cauldron was a cool place to work sometimes.

  
  
  



End file.
